Friday, June 22, 2012

Careering around at the UK UXPA

“He’s actually really nice”

Notwithstanding the fact that any address that ends in
‘Canary Wharf’ seems to disappear into the Bemuser Triangle the closer I get to
it and that on this occasion I wasn’t alone in trying to locate an enormous
shiny building that was right in front of me, I made it along to the UK UXPA
careers event yesterday at the Thomson Reuters building somewhere in, well,
Canary Wharf, along with a number of extraordinary colleagues from Foolproof
who I can only describe as infinitely more approachable than myself. And Matt.

I had initially registered as an attendee, just because I
was interested in the event anyway, but somehow become part of the official
delegation, which mostly meant I had to carry Karen’s popup banner from Goswell
Road to Canary Wharf. Either way, I’d really come to attend the panel
discussion with Leslie Fountain, Andy Budd, and the most charming man in the
world™, Giles Colborne, who were going to have a stab at discussing the
vagaries of UX in the boardroom and what that means to business, businesses,
management, aspiring management, new hires, prospective new hires, clients,
projects, practice, vision, values, mission, goals, and how things smell.

At the same time as the panel, there was to be several
rounds of speed-dating for prospective employers/recruiters and
candidates/people of interest, which, as it turns out, would consist of some
rather loud whistling, CVs, portfolios, elevator pitches, business cards,
raised eyebrows, knowing glances, ticks in boxes and, by the end of the evening,
more or less passing out on the corporate carpet. Taking part in one of these
events requires a strong constitution and boundless enthusiasm. I wasn’t part
of it.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was also some splendid UX
booth kinda action in the main foyer, where I noticed Jason Mesut was
delivering the kind of folio advice that can leave unsuspecting
hopefuls in that curious state of super encouraged and mostly terrified about
their future. That man knows what he’s talking about, children.

And if that that wasn’t enough wasn’t enough, there was more
pork product than I think I’ve ever seen in one place and buckets of cold
Prosecco, which would later be the cause of my Downfall-like self-castigation
wandering rather too close to very deep water whilst frantically searching for
the underground station that would take me to the train back to Norwich via
Stratford, the official travel centre of the London 2012 Olympic park in
association with A SHOP or something. For UX events at Canary Wharf are not
your UX events in Shoreditch. I mean, I like hot lofts and crisps and
everything, but corporations do hospitality as a core practice and they mostly
do it very well. Thompson Reuters didn’t buck that trend.

But back to the panel. Leslie opened proceedings with some
discussion points about what it means to provide leadership in UX businesses
and, specifically, used the example of how this is manifest at Foolproof. Core
to her proposition is that vision and values are critical in describing what
your business is all about and enables internal stakeholders and staff to
deliver toward that and understand why they do what they do in context of what
that means to the company. Crucially, it also describes to the outside world –
clients, customers, partners, candidates, friends – what the culture of the
company is, what their aims are, and how they intend to pursue their goals, so
that it becomes a shared imperative at the point where relationships are formed
and ongoing engagements are managed. In other words, it enables you to say “this
is who we are and this is where we’re going. If you like the look of that, lets
have a conversation”.

I like Leslie. I like hearing her talk. I like her style.
We’re going to do a double act.

What followed Leslie’s opener was a nicely animated
discussion, which, in a nice touch, had Andy, Leslie and the most charming man
in the world™;, Giles, perched on stools, like some awesome UX Westlife.
There was even a spare stool next to Andy and I was sorely tempted to join them
for an impromptu cover of a Jared Spool ballad or something, but resigned myself
to kicking things off with the first question, which went something like “yeah,
you say vision and values but really, people just ignore that stuff, innit?”
Needless to say, it was pointed out that yes, that might often be true, but
what we try and do is…

I only trailed off there because I can’t remember the answer
correctly. But over the next 40 minutes or so, an awful lot of sense was
spoken. I was particularly drawn to the passion and sincerity in Andy’s
descriptions of how he makes his business decisions, runs his company and
decides what to do and why. He was very honest about the learnings made from
his mistakes and how he used those to make better decisions and, in particular,
learn how to say no, which was a bit of recurrent theme. As ever, Giles was
thoroughly entertaining, but because of the most charming man in the world™ thing, every time he spoke, I just kind a gawped at him like a headlit rabbit
as the words came out and consequently missed a lot of what he actually said.
He does tell a good story though.

And then I was done. I did get to speak to a number of
people during the course of the evening who commented, as I felt, that this
wasn’t like a normal UX event, because you get to speak to each other
throughout, rather than at the end, which was all very convivial. I hope those
bright-faced young prospectives got as much out of it as the gurn-faced old
miseries (that’s me, by the way, just to be clear) did. Curiously, I also had a
couple of people make the comment at the beginning of this post. That was about
Andy. I’ve no idea how they might have thought otherwise.

Thanks to the UK UXPA for organising. Canary Wharf is
sometimes a bit wrong, but last night there was a little place in the middle where
everything was right.